Category: the people

Yesterday was Pentecost, the fiftieth and last day of Easter in our church. It celebrates the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles (one or more of whom was statistically likely to be gay.) “The people were amazed because each Apostle spoke in the native language of each of them.” Thus formed the “one church” doctrine summed up in Galatians 3:1 “…there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Those who say that gay people are less worthy of marriage than straight people because of something in their Bible are committing the holy sin of dividing God’s family, as well as the most heinous of secular sins, using their own faith to deny freedom to others.

When these people come to you, Governor, asking you to support their agenda of bigotry and hatred, you are not obliged to treat them with the dignity or respect of a meeting, because they have deliberately and relentlessly denied those things to their neighbors.

Governor, I wish you would apologize for vetoing AB 43, the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act that would have legalized gay marriage through the legislature. I wish you would speak out against those Opponents of Equality and their agenda of apartheid. I wish you would make the GOP get rid of Michael Steele so Republicans can be electable again.

With the upcoming Constitutional Amendment to Limit Marriage, I think we are missing a great opportunity. Everybody is framing this as a risk that voters will “take away marriage” and cause “legal chaos for same-sex couples across the country,” or in your case, just plain “unnecessary.”

We should be looking at this as an historic opportunity for the people to reaffirm what the Supreme Court said: using the Constitution to take an entire class of people and treat them differently because of how they were born or what they believe is fundamentally wrong.

Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of their country. Please urge the people of California to uphold the constitution, and vow to vote no on Amendments to Limit freedom and liberty.

Sincerely,

Today’s stamp: Silver Surfer, from the Marvel Comics “Super Heroes” collection. Mr. Surfer took the threat of the destruction of his home planet and turned it into an opportunity to do good.

A Field Poll of 1,052 registered California voters asked “Do you approve or disapprove of California allowing homosexuals to marry members of their own sex?” and for the first time since 1977 – when California’s law was changed to ban the unions – a majority answered that yes, they do support same-sex marriage.

As my Aunt wrote after she saw our story in the Chicago Tribune, “It’s about time.” The Wall Street Journal described it on their May 24 Opinion page, “Court Allows Gay Marriage: Tyranny or Its End?” And my Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa said “It’s time for us to bring every American out of the shadows and into the light, and this decision does that here in California.

Personally, I’m hoping to marry my fiancée of eleven years in a couple of weeks, and my friends, family and church are on the edge of their seats.

Please, Governor, keep supporting the freedom to marry in our great state. Keep fighting against the amendment. And most of all, please do whatever you can to make sure marriages start as soon as possible and continue after November.

Today on the radio I heard about “Black Liberation Theology.” The logic goes like this: Jesus was a rabble-rouser. He kept telling people that they should not listen to the rabbinical power players, but rather listen to God. This upset the power players so much they executed him for what we would today call political crimes.

But through his life and death, He gave us liberty not just over the tyranny of death, but also over the tyranny of Old Testament laws and oppressive Roman rule. We reach heaven not through punishing people, but by liberating them. From The Good Samaritan to The Sermon on the Mount, God’s message is clear: we are to love God with all our heart, soul, body and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. That what Dr. Martin Luther King, Bishop Desmond Tutu and even Jeremiah Wright are trying to tell us, and not a bad foundation.

Now as a gay dad, I’m just trying to be the best husband, father and Christian that I can. That seems to disturb a lot of people. But what Liberation Theology shows us is God wants us to love and accept people no matter how much they disturb us. Whether the gays will or won’t go to heaven is unclear, but whether the oppressors or the oppressed will go to heaven is crystal clear.

Putting your veto on AB 43, the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, was an easy thing for you to do, but if there is any truth to Liberation Theology, it was not the right thing to do. After all, I may be a rabble-rouser myself, but I am still your neighbor.

I was astonished to learn that even the opponents of equality believe “domestic partnership” and marriage are in fact the same things.

Kentucky State Senator Vernie McGaha introduced legislation that would bar state agencies and schools from providing health insurance for the domestic partners of their employees, even when fully paid for by the beneficiaries. Sen. McGaha said that he was concerned about the erosion of the sanctity of marriage by the provision of domestic-partner benefits.

That the bill was defeated in committee was no surprise. State Senator Ernesto Scorsone explained “I think most Kentuckians believe if you are able to pay for the insurance, you ought to be able to buy it.”

What shocked me was that six of the fifteen committee members voted for the legislation, apparently considering simple domestic partnership benefits to be an offensive intrusion by the gays into the world of marriage. These people will not be happy until I am exterminated.

Governor, it is time to choose between encouraging marriage and encouraging intolerance. The voters of this state are on the verge of changing our Constitution to block people like me from forming partnerships. Whether this comes out nine to six or six to nine depends on your support. I wish you would tell the people that you support the freedom to marry.

The more I look closely at what leaders say about same-sex marriage, the more I see that they are responsible for the character of their people.

I have written to you before about great leaders like Bishop Tutu and Prime Minister Zaparto who use words to unite their people. And then there is Poland’s leader, Mr. Kaczynski, who showed a video clip of two New Yorkers getting married, saying that “the lack of an exact definition of marriage as a union of man and woman could challenge the moral order commonly accepted in Poland.”

The people Mr. Kaczynski used as poster children for moral decay without their knowledge or permission were two New Yorkers who were as mystified as I am as to why the leader of Poland would consider them a national threat.

“I’m a happily married man. I have a good life,” one of them said, “For us it was a moment of love. Here was a political leader turning that around.”

Back here in California, for all of the time I spend studying what leaders say about same-sex marriage, I still don’t understand why you repeatedly tell the people that it is somehow OK to turn our moments of love into something reprehensible or disgusting. I wish you would tell the people of California that there is nothing wrong with same-sex marriage; there is everything wrong with banning it.

In July of 2004, with marriages erupting in Massachusetts and California, your Republican nominee for President John McCain argued against a Federal Marriage Amendment to permanently ban gay marriage. He said the states should decide and that “We will have to wait a little longer to see if Armageddon has arrived.”

It has been four years, Governor. Massachusetts won the World Series and California hasn’t fallen into the ocean. Canada, South Africa and Spain are all economically outperforming the United States. There is no Armageddon.

You can spot a false prophet by their false prophesies. The Opponents of Equality are wrong – again. I wish you would improve marriage by letting the people make the personal and individual choice of who they marry for themselves.

As a conservative Christian gay Republican dad, I would love Mike Huckabee to be the Republican nominee for President. In fact, on Super Tuesday, he’s going to get my vote.

Everybody knows that he is unelectable, so his nomination is my best chance at getting somebody in the White House who respects my faith, my family and my individual freedom to make my own decisions about who I marry.

So, Governor, please support Mike Huckabee for President so we can get somebody with compassion, tolerance and talent into the White House.

When you vetoed AB 43, the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, you said that the people should decide the future of gay marriage.

What you should have said is that the people should be able to decide who they want to marry for themselves.

You see, your version takes away the most intimate decision from people and puts it in the hands of the state, my version takes away that very personal decision from Sacramento and puts it in the hands of the people who would be actually getting married.

Please tell the people of California that you made a mistake – it is the power to decide who to marry, not the power to decide who can marry, that should be in the hands of the people.